IGMS Issue 40 Read online

  Diallo searched through drifts of paper, packing foam, and plastic. He found a foil food wrapper. He extracted a twenty dollar note from his hidden pocket and cast it into the drifts on the other side of the fence. He wrapped the remainder of his money with the foil.

  Strong Pan arms pulled him into the tall grass that hummed with the sound of insects. Between the blades of grass he saw three security guards approach the fence. Two held handguns and the third held a small electronic device in his hand. He waved it back and forth to get a bearing on the money and settled on a direction. He walked to the fence, crouched, and reached into the drift of refuse. He pulled his hand out clutching his reward.

  He checked the machine again. "Ah, a twenty. Not two thousand. Stupid machine." He holstered the device. The men retreated, vanishing among the trucks.

  The Pans and the two humans stood up in the tall grass.

  "You must give me more for almost getting us caught," said the Conductor.

  "We have a deal," said Diallo.

  Moki grabbed the Conductor's wrist and twisted, dropping the man to his knees."Man, take us to the next station. Now."

  "Take your hands off me stupid chimp," said the Conductor.

  "Pan," said Moki. "Tell me why I need to suffer your insults, man?"

  "For all those that wish to come after you, dumb ape," said the Conductor. "Now, let go of me."

  "One day," said Moki. He released the Conductor.

  "But not today," said the Conductor. He rubbed at his wrist and then disappeared down a swampy path laced with reflective pastels of toxic waste and oil. "Deal with you later, boy," said the Conductor.

  The troop followed the Conductor along the trail. They crawled through a hole in another chain link fence and made their way to the docks for smaller human-crewed ships. The Conductor flashed a light onto the bridge of an old, but well cared for, freighter. A light flashed back.

  "This is where you go," said the Conductor to the Pans, pointing to the freighter. He looked at Diallo. "You will come with me."

  "Go," said Moki to the troop. The Pans broke and dashed to the bow of the ship, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. A British officer, wearing an impeccable white uniform, greeted them on the quarterdeck.

  Moki put his hand on Diallo's shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. "Good luck with your freedom."

  "Good luck with yours," said Diallo.

  Diallo hid in the grass for a long time and waited for the Conductor to return. He checked and rechecked the riot baton in his pocket.

  The Conductor came back to the hiding place. "I have made arrangements. Building seventy-four is for the Ombudsman's use. They are the ones that take care of the ship's services." He pointed down the road. "You go there and deal with them. Now pay me."

  "Take me there," said Diallo.

  "No, that was not our agreement. I do not wish to be known by such men and neither do you. Now pay me."

  Diallo paid the Conductor. The Conductor took a few steps and turned back. "Boy, I am a business man. The animal lovers pay me and I feed my own. Those you go to see trade in humans. They are war witches, survivors of this continent's darkest hours. Do you know what that means?"

  Diallo said nothing.

  "If you are smart you will go home. Do not meddle with them. This advice is worth the five hundred you have given me. It is worth more."

  "I do not believe in witchcraft."

  "Your belief does not matter. They believe and that is what matters." He walked away, opposite of the direction he indicated for building seventy-four. "Heed me boy. Faith is strong in Africa, but like all good things, even faith can be corrupted."

  Diallo stalked his way to building seventy-four, a small wood-framed structure illuminated by dull florescent lights. Concealed behind overflowing garbage cans, he studied his surroundings. A singular shadow moved inside the building to unknown purpose. Across the street, a tiny red flare bloomed. He saw another man sitting in an open-topped and door-less four-by-four vehicle smoking in the shadows. Once he went inside the building the other would come from behind him and capture him for sale to a brothel, or rare earth mine, or worse yet, for vivisection on a brain farm.

  Going home would be smartest option, but it wasn't the bravest. It was time now to be both brave and smart. He approached the smoking man from behind and crept with animal quiet. He pressed against the knobby spare tire and deployed the baton. The man turned, exhaling a plume of smoke. His eyes widened in surprise. Diallo touched the man's head. The man kicked a beat against the vehicle floorboards and tumbled to the ground unconscious. Dark blood leaked from his bitten tongue. Around his neck, he wore a talisman to ward off evil or put it upon someone else. A gold nugget ring wrapped the middle finger of his left hand.

  War witches, thought Diallo, those that believed that virgins cured AIDS or that walking backwards across battlefields made one invisible. Scars and tattoos illustrated the man with the superstitions that mired Africa in human misery.

  For a moment Diallo considered taking the man's finger, thinking that if the man could afford the ring, he could afford a new finger, but instead, he threaded the ring onto the talisman's leather lace and hung it around his own neck. He dusted himself with white clay road-substrate and dipped his fingers in the man's blood and drew three streaks down the center of his face. He blackened his fingers with the exhaust residue from the vehicles tailpipe and darkened his eye sockets and lips. It did not matter what he looked like as long as it was terrifying. He checked his visage in the truck's mirror.

  "Abiku," said Diallo.

  The Ombudsman faced away and did not hear Diallo enter.

  "Ombudsman," said Diallo. "I am very hungry."

  The Ombudsman turned and his cruel face twisted in fear. He could not escape what he had done. He could not help what he believed.

  "Ombudsman," said Diallo again. "The children here are poor fare. I wish to go to America."

  "Who . . . who are you?"

  "Abiku," said Diallo. "Send me to America where the children are fat."

  The Ombudsman glanced down and focused on the talisman and nugget ring. He gasped and looked to the door.

  "Ombudsman, no one is coming," said Diallo.

  "Yes, yes," said the Ombudsman. He keyboarded an input to the computer at the counter. A mini-fab printer warmed up.

  "I need to take your picture," said the Ombudsman.

  "Yes," said Diallo. "Come closer."

  "No, this is fine."

  The flash went off and Diallo stepped forward uninvited.

  "Please," said the Ombudsman pitiably.

  The mini-fab whirred and clicked and lay down the identifications one molecule at a time. The machine beeped and the Ombudsman took out the identifications and waved them in the air to cool. He set them on the counter.

  "You must go to the deep quay where the big ships are. This ID will show you as a contract fumigator assigned to the Atlantic Conveyor on pier 14. It is a dumb ship and it will let you onboard. It is going to Jacksonville."

  Diallo snatched the documents off the counter. "Ombudsman, you should stay inside tonight. I am very hungry."

  Diallo woke thirsty and hungry to the sound of rumbling diesel engines. He gathered his backpack and ascended from his hiding place, past stacked containers loaded into the belly of the ship. He opened the hatch and burst into bright mid-day sun. A deep canyon of containers stretched ahead; the blocky superstructure of the ship towered behind. Confused sparrows chirped and flitted between the containers. The small birds forayed over open water before curling back to safety.

  He walked aft to the superstructure. Windows at the uppermost deck glinted in the sun. Dish antennas and hooded sensors gazed out over the horizon. Diallo opened a door into the superstructure and sour air burst out. Paint flaked and peeled from the wall and scabs of rust bloomed on exposed metal. A coiled firefighting station dripped water that pooled in a salt-rimmed depression on the floor.

  He washed the worst of his
Abiku disguise off in the puddle and it spiraled away down the deck drain. He climbed higher in the superstructure and investigated crew quarters stripped bare. He feared that he had made a terrible mistake coming aboard so ill-prepared. At the uppermost deck, he opened a door with a brass plaque labeled "Captain's Cabin." The room was hot, dusty, and empty.

  He peered through a door window opposite the Captain's cabin into the bridge. He could see past the long length of the ship and the stacked containers to a distant blue horizon. Movement caught his eye and he pressed his face against the glass to get a better angle. A robot, a General Dynamics MK IV Wraith, arranged short, silver cylinders, lethetic processors, upon the ship's control consoles. The robot touched them one at a time and Diallo thought he heard the robot speaking, but could not imagine the necessity of it. Behind the robot, he saw stacks of plastic gallon jugs of water and cartons labeled: MRE. He saw a chessboard on the floor. He stepped away from the door to the stair well. The MK IV Wraith model had pacified Tehran, Damascus, and most of Africa. Its heirs explored worlds around Eridani and Ceti without human help. Nothing good would come from encountering a combat robot that talked to itself and played with the brains of its brethren.

  He descended into engineering spaces, wary of alarms and sensors, but saw none. He found a door labeled: Reverse Osmosis, but when he entered, he saw that the machinery used to turn salt water to fresh had been removed. He turned creaking freshwater valves that yielded dribbles of rancid, rusty water unfit for drinking. His thirst, currently a minor discomfort, would become unbearable and hamper his ability to think. And then, after several days, he would die.

  He climbed back up to the bridge, paused at the bridge's door for a moment, and opened it. The robot turned and stared at him with its three blue eyes. One silver arm extended and the hand beckoned him to come in. Diallo knew that there would be no escape from the machine.

  He entered, closed the door, and sat behind the chessboard.

  The dark pieces were laser-carved metal fashioned into classes of robots, the king, a fearsome Imperator, the queen, a Lockheed Destroyer. Jaguars, Wraiths, Reapers, and Centurions completed the set. The lighter chessmen, humans, carried a variety of Chinese, Russian, and American weapons, and were elaborately carved from bone. Diallo recognized the king as Thomas Morgan, the genocidal Liberian dictator that swept through Africa with his murderous armies until defeated by relentless American robots.

  The Wraith deployed bladed weapons from its two arms. The runnels were stained brown.

  "My Tutor taught me to play chess," said Diallo. "Do you want to play?"

  "Tutor," said the Wraith. The blades retracted. The robot cocked its head for a moment and then with a fluid grace breezed toward Diallo and sat behind the chessboard. "Yes. I will play." The machine reset the pieces.

  Diallo selected a bone-carved pawn, a tearful child-soldier carrying an AK-47, and made his opening move. When he set the piece down, the pawn collapsed into a cross-legged position with the AK-47 on its lap.

  "Where did you get the bone to make the pieces?" asked Diallo.

  "People, who lost the game," said the robot. It picked up a pawn and set it down to answer Diallo's move.

  Diallo advanced his knight from G1 to F3.

  The Wraith moved its pawn from D7 to D5.

  Diallo studied the board and moved the D2 pawn to D4. To his surprise the Wraith did not exploit an opportunity to capture a pawn in jeopardy, but moved its knight from G8 to F6.

  Hunched over a chessboard, the machine looked like a toy, but he had seen footage of the machines in action and knew how fast they could tear through human armies. He put the thought from his mind and put his bishop, carved in the form of a Catholic cardinal, into play.

  The Wraith answered with his own bishop, a winged reaper.

  The Wraith castled with the rook at G8.

  Diallo advanced his E2 pawn to E3 and wiped sweat from his face. He sacrificed a pawn to the Wraith's knight and captured the Wraith's bishop with his own which, in turn, was taken by the Wraith's queen.

  They reached the middle game and pieces fell every move and to his surprise and confusion he realized that the machine took just as long to decide on a move as he did. Diallo checked the Wraith's king with his queen on E8. The machine executed its remaining move and placed its king forward one square to G7. Diallo slid his queen to H8 putting the king into checkmate between the queen and the rook. The Wraith sat back and cocked its head. It looked up at Diallo and then with a stiletto finger that no doubt, had plunged into soft human bodies, toppled over its king.

  "Good night," said Diallo. He crossed the bridge to the stacks of water and MREs. He selected a gallon jug and two of the brown, plastic-wrapped meals. The Wraith studied the board and looked up at him with its blue eyes as he left the bridge.

  "Puzzling," said the Wraith.

  Diallo and the Wraith played many games. When Diallo won, which was most of the time, he took a gallon of water and an MRE to the Captain's cabin. When he lost, he left empty-handed. Once, in mid-game, the robot took his notebook and turned the pages, lingering at each, as if considering the aspirations within. The machine displayed odd behavior. On a daily basis it arranged the loose cortical stacks in formations on the ship's consoles, touching and talking to them before putting them away in a canvas bag. The cortical stacks, powerful lethetic processors or memory engines, were trained, rather than programmed. Like all computers, they were capable of a binary yes or no, but disagreements between the two halves of their bicameral architecture could also generate a maybe. Those that believed in AI believed that these machines had an identity.

  "Who are they?" asked Diallo.

  "Comrades lost in the wars. I find them and bring them home."

  The machine is on a mission, thought Diallo. It would not want to get caught, which meant it had motive. "Are you going to kill me?" asked Diallo.

  The machine looked at Diallo and cocked its head. "Not today," said the Wraith.

  As they approached the American coast, the ship's expert systems flashed commands meant for human eyes. The ship changed course, veering south, in response to a notice of an impending Sea Dragon launch.

  "It is coming again," said the Wraith. An airborne speck showed on the horizon and then resolved itself into an armed NASA Enforcer drone sent to ensure compliance with the exclusion zone. Satisfied, it overflew the ship and banked away.

  "It's almost time; look to the north," said the Wraith.

  Diallo saw a bright flickering flash of light on the horizon that steadied into a miniature sun that rose higher in the sky on a pillar of billowing white steam. The massive Sea Dragon rocket arced to the east, ascending the sky like a man-made daystar. The sound of distant thunder broke over the ship and filled his head with a magnificent roar that went on and on. This is what I am here for, thought Diallo. He watched as the recoverable first stage fell away, buoyed by massive parachutes. The rocket vanished into the blue.

  The deck canted as the ship heeled over and changed course back to the northwest. Specks of orange light swarmed the water in trail to the setting sun. Distant city lights winked in the twilight horizon. The ship turned again setting up for its approach and threaded its way through Sealaunch platforms and fueling stations built to service the near earth stellar survey ships. A spidery gravity-lifter overflew the ship with a cargo pod slung beneath its legs.

  The ship entered the channel and followed the twists of the St. John's River past the rapier sharp destroyers of Naval Station Mayport. North of the city center, it pivoted on its bow and stern thrusters, and docked on the western bank's piers. From the Captain's cabin monitor, Diallo and the robot watched the pier crew tie the ship and drop a brow into place. They hid when men came onboard to hookup shore power. Late in the evening, a stilted crane rumbled over and picked containers from the ship. Below, trucks lined up to receive their multi-modal containers.

  "The machines in America are smarter than the ones in Africa. They will see an
d report us," said the robot.

  "How will we get off?" asked Diallo.

  An electronic counter-measures pod on the Wraith's back opened. Tiny dish and rod antennas extruded. "We will become invisible to them. Gather your belongings."

  Diallo retrieved his backpack and met the robot in the passageway. They descended the stairwell and stepped onto the deck between the shrinking stacks of containers. The wraith's antenna's swiveled in the direction of the crane, shielding them from electronic eyes.

  "This one is next," said the Wraith. "Climb."

  They reached the top of the container just as the tethered crane claw started its descent.

  "Lie down and hold on," said the Wraith.

  The crane claw plummeted from the dark sky like the hand of God to smash Diallo. The fingers splayed wide and the palm stopped inches from his face. Metal fingers slid into channels and the container lifted with terrifying speed and ease. Diallo flew two hundred feet high and then just as fast as he rose; he fell. The container thumped onto the spine of a truck and clamps snapped into place. The crane lifted away and the truck drove off, leaving the pier behind. At the exit to the port facility, the truck merged with highway traffic. Diallo felt the cold fingers of the Wraith robot as it gripped the collar of his shirt to help hold him on the ridged roof of the container. They drove for a few miles and then exited onto side roads and drove a few more. The truck stopped. Diallo and the robot climbed off. The truck sat for a moment, confused as to its location. It recalculated and departed.

  "This way," said the Wraith.

  Diallo thought of running, but knew it would be pointless. He would just die tired if the machine decided to kill him. They walked a short distance into a small stand of trees ringed by a barricaded concrete entry ramp to a crumbling highway. In the center of the pocket forest, silver hobos sat in front of a fire. The machines, some twitching with unknown robot ailments and concerns, did not look up. The Wraith approached a battle-scarred robot and handed over the bag of cortical stacks. The battle-scarred robot turned to observe Diallo with scratched plastic lenses.